One Good Reason (Boston Love #3)(90)

I’m starting to feel uneasy about this.

“…Or maybe you’re already deaf,” I murmur, eyeing the space around me. There are no locker rooms back here. I stop walking.

“Where’s Luca?” I ask, my pulse picking up speed.

The man turns to me, and I see the remorse on his face a second before I see his fist swinging out to clip me across my temple.

“I’m sorry,” he tells me, a second before his blow makes contact and everything goes black. “I didn’t have a choice. He’s got my family.”



* * *



When I wake up, my wrists are bound with a zip-tie and my head feels like someone used it as the ball in a game of ping pong. There’s also the fact that I’m being carried like a sack of flour over the shoulder of the guy who bashed my brains in.

I’m not sure if it’s the blow to the head or the fact that he’s holding me upside down, but I think I might vomit down his back. Which, seriously, would serve him right. I try to struggle, but none of my limbs are cooperating. The most I can manage is a weak kick against his shins as he hauls me from the backseat of his car across a parking lot. I see cracked asphalt passing beneath his feet and wonder vaguely if there’s a chance this man kidnapped me by accident.

Maybe he was looking for another Zoe.

I’ve never even seen this guy before. Who would possibly arrange for me to be accosted and abducted?

Lancaster.

The thought creeps into the back of my mind and lodges there, until it’s unshakably entrenched.

But he’s in jail, a voice of reason reminds me. There’s no way he’s behind this.

My foggy theories don’t matter, because we’re suddenly moving up a set of dilapidated stairs and into what looks like an old office building, judging by the stained beige carpet. My head jostles roughly as he carries me through the space, and nausea stirs to life in my gut again.

I’m definitely going to puke.

Unfortunately, before I manage to vomit on him, my captor bends forward and deposits me on a stainless steel table, the kind you find bolted to the floor in a crappy doctor’s clinic. Grunting in pain as he drops me, I fall to my side on the cold table, unable to keep myself upright with my head spinning.

He hit me really f*cking hard, the bastard.

“Why are you doing this?” I moan as the man stares at me, both hands fisted in his hair. He looks more distressed than I feel, which is really saying something.

“I didn’t have a choice.” The man swallows nervously. “I’m just a part-time worker at Scythe. I don’t even usually work on fight nights. But this guy… he showed up in my f*cking house last night.” He swallows again, Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “I have a wife. I have a three-year-old son. He said if I didn’t help him…”

I try to breathe. “Who? Who are you talking about?”

“I don’t know his name, okay? All I know is, he said I had to go to the fight, somehow get you away from the crowd, and bring you here.” He leans back against the opposite wall. “And if I did that, he’d let my family go.”

“Call the police,” I hiss, struggling into an upright position.

“I’m not putting my family in danger.” He runs his hands through his hair, breathing heavily. The whites of his eyes flash as he looks around the run-down doctor’s office. It’s clear he’s spiraling quickly into panic. The guilt and the worry are eating away at him. He’s probably not a bad guy, under normal circumstances.

Considering nothing about this circumstance is normal, it’s safe to say he’s not exactly my favorite human on earth, right now.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

He glances at me, wild-eyed. “Steve.”

“Untie me, Steve,” I beg. “You’ve got the wrong girl. I don’t know who the hell would want you to bring me here. I don’t have anything to do with this… this… whatever this is.”

He freezes. “You’re Zoe Bloom, right? He said you’d be near the front, surrounded by those big guys. Blonde. Petite. You fit the description perfectly.”

My forehead wrinkles. I lean back against the wall, feeling dizzy again. “This doesn’t make sense,” I whisper, more to myself than to him. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, but you did.” The man’s voice slithers in from the doorway like a snake, dripping venom.

I go still as my eyes move to take him in… and gasp when I realize exactly who brought me here.

Doctor Charles Birkin.





20





The Junkie




He’s more disheveled than his picture in the Lancaster Consolidated staff directory — gone is his tie, his crisp white physician’s coat. His hair looks dirty and overgrown. His clothes are stained and ill-fitting, as though he’s lost weight too rapidly to replace them.

It’s clear even before he enters the room that he’s on drugs. Junkies have a particular look — flushed, fidgety, covered in a faint sheen of sweat. Their eyes are always a little too wide, their moments a little too jagged.

“Zoe Bloom!” Birkin claps his hands as he steps toward me. “Let’s have a round of applause, shall we?” He looks at Steve. “Why aren’t you clapping?”